http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/14/HOGCRGL75U1.DTL
Bad news.
A story reached my desk yesterday about the death of Kenton Carnegie, 22, a geology student. Carnegie was attacked and killed by wolves while hiking in remote Northern Saskatchewan. Carnegie is the first human known to have been killed by healthy, wild wolves in North America.
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The incident took place in early November, but yesterday's story was the first I'd heard of the unfortunate tragedy.
Those of us who stand a few feet back from the impassioned wolf watchers have wondered when a person would fall victim to wolves. Wolves are wild animals. They have a long track record of killing people in Europe and elsewhere, about which I will offer a bit of perspective in a moment. But, before this, death by wolf was unknown in North America.
I have been able to find 27 recorded wolf attacks on humans in North America. Some have resulted in serious injury, but all of the people attacked by wolves here have survived.
Now, before everyone runs off in a panic nattering that we have to stop wolf reintroductions, let's put Carnegie's untimely death in perspective. Canadian wildlife officials have launched a thorough investigation and have already issued some preliminary findings.
The officials noted that the local people had fed the wolves -- both intentionally and unintentionally -- in the area where Carnegie was attacked. The wolves had grown used to being around people and seeing them as a source of food. The term wildlife managers use for this is habituation. Contrary to popular belief, habituated wildlife is always more dangerous to humans than wildlife that is naturally wary of humans.
I am not the best person to make this point because I have done it myself, but feeding wildlife, except in situations authorized by local wildlife officials, is dumb, harms the animals, and may harm you. The best example is deer. Deer are everywhere because we feed them our garden plants and even put out food for them. Where there are deer, there are mountain lions. Enough said.
Humans have a very weird news gene that causes us to panic over unlikely events, such as great white shark attacks, a far bigger risk than wolf attacks even if you're not a surfer, and ignore or trivialize more immediate dangers such as domestic dogs.
I see this all the time in Yellowstone. Visitors go on and on about bear attacks (12 people injured since 1978) and pay no attention to the bison (56 people attacked in the same time frame). Or how about this statistic: 29,000 people injured and 200 killed each year in the United States in automobile collisions with deer.
An exhaustive Norwegian study surveyed all wolf attacks throughout the world for the last several hundred years. Wolf attacks on humans have been growing in frequency. The Norwegians wanted to assess the threat.
The most prevalent cause of wolf attacks? Rabies. During the period when wolf attacks were more common in Europe, the majority were made by rabid wolves. At the same historical time, wolves and larger domestic dogs interbred. Some of the "killing sprees" by wolves documented in France (one rabid wolf/dog cross bit more than 30 people) were by domestic dog/wolf crosses.
Just thinking about a rabid wolf is scary, but there is almost no chance of rabies getting into a wolf population today. Because of inoculation, Europe is almost rabies-free and so is North America. Rabid wolves are unlikely in the extreme.
